Kvitova crushes Bouchard in fifth quickest Wimbledon title victory

Nassos Stylianou is an Online Writer at City A.M. He can be contacted at nassos.stylianou@cityam.com. He is particularly passionate about: sport, European politics and startups

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Petra Kvitova wins Wimbledon for the second time (Source: Getty)

Petra Kvitova has just won her second Wimbledon title in four years, barely breaking sweat as she disposed of challenger Eugenie Bouchard in straight sets.

Kvitova, seeded sixth ahead of the tournament, becomes the fourth woman to be crowned champion at the All England Club more than once since 1990, thrashing her 20-year-old Canadian opponent 6-3, 6-0.

While Bouchard had reached the final without dropping a single set, the Czech champion raced to a 2-0 victory, winning the game in just 55 minutes.

This makes it the quickest Wimbledon final in over thirty years since Martina Navratilova needed just 54 minutes to see off Andrea Jaeger in 1983. In fact, the time in which Kvitova overcame Bouchard makes this the fifth quickest women's Wimbledon final in the Open era, the period from 1968 when professionals could compete in the big tournaments.

The quickest final victory in the women's game came in 1975 when Billie Jean King took Australian Evonne Cawley apart, losing just one game in the entire match, which ended 6-0, 6-1. Cawley did recover from the thrashing, going on to conquer SW19 five years later.

Today's encounter was as one-sided as it gets, with Kvitova playing some of the best tennis of her career, breaking early in the third game and never looked like giving Bouchard a chance.

Looking at the stats for the last 10 Wimbledon women's finals however, it seems a common theme. Only three title matches have gone the distance. in the last decade. Since 2007, only Serena Williams needed three sets to beat Agnieszka Radawanska in 2012, while all other encounters were done and dusted in two sets.

The men's game has given us more evenly matched Wimbledon finals in the last few years, with the tightly fought contests between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal between 2007 and 2009 lasting the distance - and even beyond that.

Kvitova will collect £1.76m in prize money for her victory, in line with the amount the male players receive after a change to the pay structure at SW19 was introduced in 2007.